2015 in Review

Well… I played a LOT of games in 2015 – and most of them were just with my family. Overall we probably played less miniature games (which is, in theory, the subject of this blog) and less role-playing games – but miniature and role-playing games took some of the tops spots in terms of games played most often.

According to BoardGameGeek I played 413 games in 2015. Most of those (I’d say 90% – or more) were with my family. Of those 358 were board or card games (ranged from 6 minute games of Loonacy to 6+ hour games of Arkham Horror), 18 were role-playing games, and 37 miniature war games - over half of which were Song of Blades and Heroes (or other games from Ganesha Games using the same game engine).

The most played games were Dominion (15 plays), Love Letter (15), Song of Blades and Heroes (15), Savage Worlds/Realms of Cthulhu/Masks of Nyarlathotep (14), Sentinels of the Multiverse (14), Race for the Galaxy (13), Frostgrave (11), 7 Wonders (10), Hive Pocket (8), Eco Fluxx (8), Coup (7), Kaiser (7), Dixit (6), Loonacy (With Fruitcake Fun Pack) (6), Tales & Games: The Hare & the Tortoise (6), Carcassonne (5), Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition) (5), For Sale (5), O Zoo le Mio (5), Pandemic (5), Rumpelstiltskin (5), and SET (5)

So while role-playing games and miniature games made up a small number of the overall number of games played – they were some of the most played games – and card games filled out the rest of the top 10.

Gaming Highlights

In January I had planned to go to Freezerburn  – an annual one-day mini-con hosted by my friend John – but ended up missing it as I ended up in  hospital for five days and missed it…

Also in January I started playing in a Savage Worlds/Realms of Cthulhu campaign. My friend Bruce was just starting up the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign with his reagular gamign group (that had recently lost a few players) and asked if I’d like to join in. Amanda and I both got in on the action and a year later the campaign rages on. WE ostensibly play every other weekend, but there were a few weekends that had to be cancelled for one reason or another, so I think we’ve only played 15-16 sessions so far. It has been a hoot! For the last 15 years I’ve been running one game or another – role-playing or tabletop miniature skirmish campaigns – it was nice just to make up a character and PLAY in a game without having to prepare anything or have adventures or scenarios ready…

In February I had initially planned to host a  Song of Shadows and Dust Campaign for my annual WArgaming Birthday Bash… but that kind of fizzled as only Terry and Paul ended up showing any interest in it… In retrospect I should have gone ahead with it. My kids had factions in the works, I could have played, I could have convinced Amanda to get in on it and the six of us would have had a hoot! Alas…

Instead I did host a Weekend of Gaming over the Family Day long weekend and I played Fear & Faith with the kids on my birthday.

 A lot of the gaming I did with the kids this year had a historical theme to it as I tried to tie games in with our study of world history. You can read more about that in Gaming Our Way Through History Part One and Gaming Our Way Through History Part Two. We’ve mostly finished Volume Three (we've finished the reading, just a few games to catch up on...) and so I should be posting Part Three soon-ish…

In September I took The Boy to ToonCon 2015. It was a huge success. The Girl was pretty disappointed she didn’t get to go. I have a feeling she’ll insist I take her as well this year. Perhaps it will become a family thing…?

Painting

I didn’t paint as much this past year – compared to previous years, but I did at least paint MORE then I purchased! Until this last month when the Black Friday/Xmas sales started I had painted over twice as many figures as I had purchased! In the end I painted 748 28mm foot figures, 40 cavalry, 7 artillery pieces and 8 vehicles (and 8 microscale tanks and one ‘mech). Which is, actually, still quite a bit of stuff.

What was all that? Well I ended 2014 painting medieval stuff for Lion Rampant, followed by a brief phase of casting about trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. I painted some Micro Sci-fi – including some Epic Eldar and then some Deep Ones and . I briefly tried to get myself motived to get back on track with the Vimy Project by painting up some Great War Canadians (52^nd (Norhtern Ontario) Battalion and some support elements for the 3^rd Division… but that didn’t last long.

By February I was looking for some “low hanging fruit” projects that I could finish up and say; “There, those are DONE!” and the easiest looking projects were a bunch of my WW2 forces in 28mm. and straight through until may I worked almost exclusively on WW2 stuff - though I had no inclination to PLAY with any of them, I had a lot of fun finishing them up. I even bought a few more things – just to fill out missing elements in the forces I had. Before I ran out of steam I finished up my Soviets, Commandoes, British/Canadian Paratroopers, Imperial Japanese Army, Chindits, Wafen SS, and Early War French Infantry. I also cranked out a few vehicles before moving on (a Tiger I, a Puma, USMC Jeep, and a Reneault R-35). Hopefully I’ll get to using some of that WW2 stuff when I get to reading about WW2 with the kids in the upcoming months.

What did I move on to? The rest of the year was mostly Medieval (finishing up a force for Lion Rampant) and Fantasy stuff for A Song of Blades and Heroes and Frostgrave. I also got a bunch of Englsih Civil War stuff done and, in the last couple months, a bunch of 40K stuff – mostly Imperial Guard.

What did I buy!? Mostly WW2 stuff – to fill out missing bits in my planned forces, Some English Civil War stuff (mostly Scots and some artillery crews for the English), a fair bit of 40K stuff (mostly Imperial guard and most of it used off ebay), a bit of fantasy stuff (for SoBH and Frostgrave) and most recently some Foundry swashbuckling types in anticipation of the immanent release of En Garde. Oh, and there was all the left-over stuff from the Reaper Bone II Kickstarter - the stuff  that the kids didn’t want. (I made a few more purchases in the last week of 2015 – but as they have not arrived and are for 2016 plans I didn’t count them – more on that in my upcoming Game Plan for 2016!)

I also got rid of all my 20mm WW2 stuff this year. Traded it all away to Bob in Edmonton. He’s been busy rebasing them all for Memoir ’44.

That's about it... Now onto 2016!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Game Plan 2016

Gaming Our Way Through History Part Three

Painting Updates with 40K Imperial Guard and Swashbuckling Swordsmen! 

11th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash

For the last decade and a bit I’ve been celebrating my birthday with friends, dice and little men made of lead. Sometimes it’s just one big game the evening or afternoon of my birthday – or other times it’s been an entire weekend affair on a weekend close to my birthday.

For this year I’d originally planned to run a Song of Shadows and Dust campaign over the Family Day long weekend two weeks ago… but that kind of fell through. I DID end up playing games all weekend - which was super fun – it wasn’t quite the minicon/campaign weekend it’s been in the past… and it was two weeks ago… it was more… well… a long weekend of playing games with the family (and a few friends) and didn’t seem at all connected with my birthday (except for the fact that "John brought me two Dr. Grogdbort graphic novels as a birthday present!

I briefly considered setting something up for my actually birthday (last night)… but never got around to organizing anything or inviting anyone… so my birthday this year was rather…. “low key”…

We started off the day with Amanda scurrying off to work while the kids and I dragged our butts out of bed. After breakfast and violin practice we did  a bit of reading – finishing off a book about Atalanta (the ancient Greek heroine). Then we had a bit of a climbing jam:

The Boy.

Not bad for an old feller... 

It makes me weep to think I was once that flexible... 

After lunch we played Olympus (I totally forgot to take a picture for this report… doh!) and I totally crushed the kids again… or maybe they let me win – because it WAS my birthday…

After that I had to haul The Girl out to her jazz dance class. When we got home and supper had been eaten and baths had been had and Amanda went out to teach her Wednesday evening yoga class, the kids and I had been planning to just play another board game or card game… but I got thinking it’s been and awfully long time since we’ve actually PLAYED a miniature game… and I’d been rereading Fear and Faith and the kids have their own zombie and survivor miniatures that they’ve never actually got to play with… so I talked them into letting me set up a little zombie scenario and we had a private little Wargaming Birthday Bash after all…

Fear and Faith

SCENARIO

WE pretty much used the “Zombie Infestation” scenario right out of the book, with the exception that the survivors had only 200 points and the zombies had 300.

 Also I added that the survivors were looking for supplies and could alternately win if the could locate 3 batches of supplies and exit with them off their own table edge. To locate supplies they had to enter a building then spend an entire turn searching it (quality roll on three dice – 2+ successes = supplies found, 1 success = try again next turn, 3 failures = no supplies in this building). Supplies were heavy and required two hands to carry – one person could do it but move would be reduced to short, if two carried it they could move at medium. An action was required to pick it up. If engaged by zombies they automatically dropped the goods.

 Some of the zombies could also be hidden in buildings – I dug out my old Zombie Hot Spot Markers to mark the different buildings (1-6 – though I suppose The Boy could just have easily written the names of the businesses for the buildings which zombies were hidden in…).

FORCES

The Survivors – played by The Girl

 (All of these were assembled and painted by The Girl – cut her some slack, she’s 8 years old…)

Amanda – Zombie Hunter with Chainsaw

Q 3+, C 2, 52 points, Chainsaw

Shelly – Zombie Hunter with Machete

Q 3+, C 3, 36 points, Heavy Weapon

Susan – Zombie Survivor with SMG

Q 4+, C 2, 24 Points, SMG (+1, Medium, Move & Shoot, Auto)

Sally – Zombie Survivor with SMG

Q 4+, C 2, 24 Points, SMG (+1, Medium, Move & Shoot, Auto)

Mackenzie - Zombie Survivor with Shotgun

Q 4+, C 2, 23 Points, Shotgun (+2/+1, Medium)

Jessica – Zombie Survivor with Pistol

Q 4+, C 2, 21 Points, Pistol (+1, Short)

Clarissa – Zombie Survivor with Golf Club

Q 4+, C 2, 20 Points, Heavy Weapon

The Zombies - played by The Boy

 (All of these were assembled and painted by the kids – The Boy painted the male zombies and, despite the fact that he had plenty zombies to field his own force, he borrowed a few of the female zombies from The Girl, just to have a little gender diversity among the undead. He’s thoughtful that way…)

15x Walking Dead

Q 5+, C2, 21 points, Zombie, Mindless, Short Move,

(I tired to convince him to take only 5 of the regular "Walking Dead" and 6 of "Grouped Walking Dead" with the "Mob" special rule, but he would have none of that...) 

THE GAME

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

The Kids all set up and ready to go.

Only four of The Boys zombies were out in the street. Four of them were hidden in buildings and the remaining seven were off the table waiting to come on as reinforcements. One of them only made two moves in the entire game.

I had a feeling things were going to go badly for the zombies – 5+ quality means at least two thirds of his guys are just not going to do stuff rolling two dice for activation is a pretty risky proposition… odds are it will result in the end of a turn…

Amanda the Zombie Hunter with a Chainsaw burst in the back door of Curt’s Comic Cave and found a zombie waiting in there for her.

(the buildings don't open, so anyone on the roof is actually "inside")

She quickly dissected it with her chainsaw and began to search for supplies… not sure what sort of supplies they were hoping to find in a comic store… perhaps back issues of The Walking Dead to learn more about what they’re up against?

Shelly didn’t fare so well across the street at the Supply Sergeants Surplus Store – there were two zombies waiting there for her. She put up a bit of a fight – and took out one of them – but was eventually overpowered by one and eaten…

One of the Zombies that had started in the middle of the table finally made its way to where Susan and Clarissa had been cowering since the first turn – unable to move. Amanda saw it shamble past and burst out the front door to saw it in half.

Unfortunately all this noise out in the street drew the attention of some of the zombie reinforcements.

Mackenzie tried to shoot one of the other zombies that had wandered up from mid table. Her first attempt she only had one action so could only push back or knock it down – she rolled high enough to triple it - which would have been a gruesome death for a normal person – but her shot just blew away part of its ribcage and it staggered away from her, but it shambled on. (zombies can only be taken out by AIMED short – i.e. to the head – I’d be willing to say that tripling it could cause enough trauma that it could be taken out of action in the future… we’ll see…)

The next turn she did get the two actions she needed to take an aimed shot and blew its head clean off!

Somewhere around this time the zombie that had eaten Shelly, shambled to the door and ate Sally – who had been standing there doing nothing for a few turns perhaps in shocked silence after witnessing the gory death of her comrade… or maybe she was just standing their screaming the whole time… not sure… but she got eaten too.

The reinforcement zombies tha arrived near the Comic Cave chased Susan and Clarissa out of their hiding spot. One of them gunked up Amanda’s chainsaw and caused it to stall… luckily she got it started again before anything dreadful happened.

All the ruckus – screaming and sawing and shotgun blasts – eventually drew the attention of the remaining zombie reinforcements.

Amanda steped in and sawed through two zombies that were trying to get at Susan.

Unfortunately Susan suffered a gruesome death that caused Amanda to recoil in horror and Clarissa to flee into the building. Eventually Clarrisa picked up the supplies in the building and made her way out the back door with them and back to their encampment… 

A zombie shambled forward and tried to take a bite out of Jessica, but she managed to knock it down long enough to make good her escape. At this point The Girl decided to cut her losses and try and escape with what she could.

Mackenzie knocked down a few more zombies wither shotgun, but they just wouldn’t STAY down because she couldn’t get her sh!t together enough to AIM FOR THE HEAD… Amanda finished off the zombies out front of The Comic Cave and came running to try and help Mackenzie, but she was too late. The zombies ate her and Amanda failed a fear test and ran off the table.

Of the seven that went looking for supplies only three came back.

Of the nine zombies that were killed – seven were taken out by Amanda and her chainsaw! Chainsaws are wicked awesome against zombies!

The kids had a great time – it has been WAY too long since we actually played a miniature skirmish. I think this may actually be the first one so far this year!? Hopefully this will inspire us to do some MORE!

I like Fear and Faith – there are some subtle differences between it and A Song of Blades and Heroes and – being the big dummy that I am – I sometimes had trouble keeping them straight and/or just forgot, but it made for a fun and interesting game and I’m looking forward to playing it some more! Though I’m tempted to have a go at Flying Lead… or perhaps Flashing Steel… too many games, not enough time!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Not sure… more painting…? Another game report…? 

Family Day Long Weekend (of GAMING!)

In the Province of Saskatchewan The third Monday of February is a statutory holiday called Family Day. This Family Day long weekend we had a Weekend of Gaming!! Originally I’d planned to have a Song of Shadows and Dust campaign – but that kind of fell through as only Paul (in Winnipeg) and Terry (in Edmonton) showed any interest and so I decided to call it off – it seemed a bit much to ask them to collectively drive almost 1300km just to play games with each other and possibly me and The Boy… AS it turned out this was really for the best as we ended up having a massive blizzard over the weekend and the roads and highways are just awful!

The complete and utter lack of interest/response from my regular gaming pals for this weekend put me into a bit of a gaming funk for a bit… and then I missed Freezerburn and spent  five days in hospital (not related)… after that I decided “screw it” I’ll have a weekend of just gaming with my family. And after another bit I decided to invite a few others to join in as well….

Here’s how it all went down...

Friday Evening - 13 February 2015

Cold Harvest

I ran a Call of Cthulhu adventure called Cold Harvest. I used a homebrew mash-up set of rules using elements of Fear and Faith, Flying Lead, and A Tale of Blades and Heroes. I wanted something simple so the focus would be on the “role-playing” and not the system of rules. I wanted the focus to be on the role-playing as the adventure is investigation heavy with very little action. Unfortunately I also wanted to run it as a one-shot, one evening adventure… and one of the three players had to spilt just after 10pm giving us only three hours to play it in… so I tired to rush it a bit… and left bits out (some on purpose, others because i forgot about them in the rush)… and then we didn’t even get to really finish it… so it was a bit of an anticlimactic fizzle to start off the weekend. Luckily things went up from there.

Saturday - 14 February 2015

This is when the snow REALLY started to fall. It was also blowing and drifiting.

Small World

In the morning Rick and Other Tim came over to join Amanda, Myself, The Boy and The Girl in a six-player game of Small World! It was fun to try out a six-player game… but it also took a long time… and we had to cut it a bit short as Amanda and The Girl had to cut out to go to a hair appointment… ah well…

Glory To Rome

Once the girls were gone Other Tim busted out a game he brought along called Glory to Rome. I really enjoyed it – a lot of options and hard decisions to make every round – I still don’t really get the strategy at all, but I had a fun time trying (and I think I actually won in the end?). The boy was a little overwhelmed and didn’t have so great of a time…

Ingenious

After Glory to Rom Rick had to leave so Other Tim, The Boy and Myself busted out Ingenious.

Around the time we finished Amanda and The Girl staggered in having clawed their way through and over countless snowdrifts between our place and the hair salon downtown. At this point Other Tim had to be on his way and I headed out to start shoveling snow.

Sun Dogs on Saturday afternoon. For those that haven't heard of them they are the lights to either side of the sun in the picture and is the sun’s light being refracted through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Generally only visible when it’s really freaking cold.

When I finally come in I found the kids actually playing a game of  O Zoo Le Mio - which was kind of exciting – it is extremely rare that they actually get out a game on their own and play it – this may be the first time they’ve done that – at least the first time they’ve done that and played the game using the ACTUAL RULES of the game…

After supper we tried out two new (to us) games…

Dungeonville

Dungeonville… I’d picked it up really cheap (like $5?) off ebay a number of years back from a distributor that was going out of business… art by John Kovalic… how bad could it be. Maybe I won’t go so far as calling it “bad’… but it’s a little simple for the likes of us and it wasn’t exactly the most fun we had we had all weekend....

Dead Man’s Treasure

Pirate Faces!

Finally we played another new to us game (also bought cheap off ebay from the very same distributor – also $5). It’s a Reiner Knizia game, so it’s quick and fun enough and clever with a bolt-on theme.

Sunday - 15 February 2015

Onward to Venus

My friend John brought over his new game Onward to Venus – which is a super fun game designed by Martin Wallace based on the Doctor Grordbort graphic novels from writer/artist Greg Broadmore. I got to play the British Empire, Amanda was France, John the Germans, The Girl played the Russians (because… ballerinas…), and The Boy played the USA.

Let’s just say that the sun does not set on the British Empire! Huzzah!

John also got me two of the graphic novels for my birthday - which was pretty awesome - THANKS!

R-eco

After John took off we tried out yet another cheap ebay game that we’re finally getting around to trying out. I’d picked it up largely because of the theme – recycling – that’s a good thing to teach kids, right? While it turned out to be a clever enough card game, the theme was pretty weak and you were theoretically different companies competing to get the city contract and if you ended your turn with too many cards in your hand you had to “illegally dump” them… Ah well…

In the evening Amanda and I wandered over to the Persephone Theatre for their performance of Mary’s Wedding - which I thought was really well done.

Monday - 16 February 2015

Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean

John stopped by again this afternoon to join us for a five-player game of Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean. We’ve played this a couple times over the last month. I really like it. You play an island in the Aegean and start with two villages that generate one of six different types of basic commodities. With those you trade with other islands (players) or neighboring or foreign lands to get different commodities to build other villages, or workshops, or agora structures on your island. The first to build all six villages, two workshops, six agora structures and two wonders wins. I don’t know if we’re getting better at it of if it just gets easier with more players - The first time we played (a three-player game – me and the kids) I don’t think anyone finished building everything. The second time we played (four-player – me and Amanda and the kids) both The Girl and I finished on the very last turn. This game The Girl (who is eight) beat us all by finishing all her buildings with two turns left to go!?

Amanda took the kids out to go sledding for a bit afterwards while I did some cleaning and sorted out how to play the next game…

Techno Witches

Amanda getting a little rowdy – wanting to demonstrate how her witch pulled off that tight turn around the tower… Fun game – witches, on upright vacuums, racing around the tabletop…

Delta V

After supper we tried out one more new game – Delta V – where we played mining companies exploring for and mining minerals in the Delta V asteroid field. It’s sort of Memory match with rockets and aliens…

I don’t know about Amanda and The Girl, but The Boy scored 3 or 4 contracts for a total of 20 points, I completed two… for a total of -1 points… Clearly I should not be heading up any mining operations in deep space!!

Oh and over the weekend we played a few games of Hearts and Kaiser – which I’ve been teaching the kids with my new fancy schmansy deck of Cthulhu cards!

Phew!

Now to get back to some miniature gaming! 

I will still be having an 11th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash on my actual birthday (Wednesday the 25th) and it WILL be a miniature war game!! If all goes according to plan I'll be running a great big game of Galleys and Galleons! (or if things don't go according to plan, it may well be some other game using the Song of Blades and Heroes engine - possible Flying Lead or Fear and Faith..?)

11th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash Weekend - 13-15 February 2015

It is that time of year again when I get to thinking about what to do for next year’s Wargaming Birthday Bash Weekend – coming up in February. With the success of last year’s skirmish campaign , I thought I’d try something similar again. This year I am thinking of a Rome-themed weekend (in part because that is what the kids and I will be studying from early January until March). There might be a Gladius or two given away as prizes... There may or may not be a toga party.... or it might just be a weekend long toga party… with miniature gaming...

So, if all went according to plan… 

Friday Night/Saturday - Song of Shadows and Dust Campaign 

Street violence in the ancient Mediterranean – Gangs of thugs representing one faction or another spilling blood in some Mediterranean city in the first century BC/BCE (or AD/CE?). I thought I'd use elements of the campaign system from Song of Deeds and Glory and maybe even have a map of the city so people can fight for control of neighborhoods...?

For the first time ever I will not be supplying forces for all the players – the players will have to bring their own Roman street gang (or similar faction). I figure this shouldn’t be too much to ask As with most "Song of" games from Ganesha Games> they will need a half dozen figures for an average faction to start with – of course they should probably plan to bring a half dozen more to add to their faction as it grows throughout the campaign (providing they don’t lose horribly in every game!). I put one together relatively inexpensively in less than a week, so…

I will be supplying the 3-5 URBAN game boards we'd need – that’s a LOT of buildings I have to make between now and then - and possibly a few of the civilians!!? Depending on the time of day there are civilians wandering around the table and react to violence in their immediate vicinity - usually running away - but sometime they JOIN one side or the other! It would be nice if others could bring along a few appropriate civilians as well…

Sunday - Conquest of the Empire (and other board games)

Another of those old Milton Bradley big box games reprinted by Eagle Games - I haven't read the rules yet, but it looks almost identical to Ikusa/Shogun/Samurai Swords – and last year’s Ikusa game WAS a whole lot of fun!

I also have a number of other Rome-Themed board and card games... Ostia, Quo Vadis, Palatinus, etc...

Another departure from previous years is that I will be holding this on the long weekend in February (13-15). Usually I like to hold it on (or at least as close to) my birthday – but a few of the out-of-towners hove suggested on a few occasions that I should hold it on the long weekend to make it easier for them to travel. So I thought I’d give that a try. (Of course that means I have two weeks less to get buildings made!)

Should be fun – hopefully we’ll have a good turn out – despite my draconian requirements of… y’know… painting your own damned figures…